THE air wars battle bringing good news to thousands of Midland holidaymakers took a new twist when low cost airline Ryanair staged a "raid" on Birmingham airport.

THE air wars battle bringing good news to thousands of Midland holidaymakers took a new twist when low cost airline Ryanair staged a "raid" on Birmingham airport.

Staff from the Irish carrier drove around Birmingham International Airport in a van decked with a poster telling customers they were at the wrong airport for low cost flights to Europe.

Ryanair recently announced that Nottingham East Midlands Airport would become its 15th base, and the poster claimed that for real low fares to Europe travellers needed to fly from there. The airline also gave away 50 free tickets.

Ryanair has constantly criticised Birmingham claiming it is more interested in looking after the interests of major airlines like British Airways than bargain price airlines.

Bridget Gowling, a project manager for Ryanair, said their new flights from East Midlands were priced from 99p one way bookable until January 19 for travel until March 25 - an offer West Midlands travellers could not afford to miss out on.

"We want to encourage people to fly from Nottingham East Midlands so we took the fight to Birmingham's doorstep," she said.

"But after about 30 minutes we were asked to leave so we went to Birmingham city centre."

But Peter Vella, Birmingham airport's business development director, said: "Ryanair is obviously desperate to operate more services from Birmingham, in addition to its current three daily Dublin flights, realising the strong market opportunities available in the West Midlands and the excellent facilities available here.

"But we are still waiting for a formal and professional proposal from them.

"Clearly, Ryanair isn't managing to attract people to East Midlands and is struggling against the low cost competition available from Birmingham including BA, bmibaby, flybe, Monarch Scheduled, Germanwings, SkyEurope, Aer Lingus.

"We're always interested expanding our network but we've had no formal approach from Ryanair for at least two years. Instead, it chooses to engage in cheap publicity stunts like this."

From March 7 Ryanair is adding ten new destinations to the five it already operates from Nottingham East Midlands.